I once asked a friend of mine who seemed to like everyone (though I knew this wasn’t true), how anyone would know if she really, genuinely liked them.

“Time,” she said, “I give them my time.”

Quality Time is one of the 5 Love Languages, and while these love languages are generally thought of in relationship to people (romantic and otherwise), there is something to be said about Time outside of relationships with people.

What about how we choose to spend TIME for OURSELVES?

There is so much to learn and experience in our world, so many things to find interesting, and yet we will go through a day doing the next thing in front of us and get to the end and not have tapped in to any of the things we find important. We will not have given these other interests our TIME. We will not have looked to our own inner SELF and asked, “what time can I give you?”

And yet to even know what it is that will really feed us we have to slow down and take the time to find out.

Slowing down.

Figuring it out.

This can be a challenging use of our time. On the surface it does not feel like we are accomplishing anything. Further, it can create great discomfort, because it requires us to ask ourselves for an answer. And what if we don’t have that answer ready to go?

And maybe we won’t always have that answer, but I suspect unless we slow down, and make TIME, we’ll miss hearing the answer when it’s ready.